This story made me happy. I really want to go play with those giant, adorable creatures who could each kill me with one swipe of a paw.

I went job-hungting this afternoon. If anyone reading this knows the Proctor District of Taocma, that’s where I was. In fact, even if no one knows it, I was still there, visiting every single restaurant and cafe. Three were closed, one in direct defiance of its door-listed hours. At the Mexican resturant, I found that the manager was, in fact, conducting interviews this very afternoon. I had popped in while he was waiting for someone who actually had a scheduled interview to show up. I jotted down a quick resume and spoke with him for a few minutes. That was my greatest success. I was also told, at Starbucks, that I could fill out an online application, if I wanted to. At Knapp’s, I was given a paper application and told that I could fill it out, copy it, and bring it to any of their related resturants (the Poodle Dog, etc.). If I wanted to. Because, like every other resturant and cafe in the neighborhood, niether of them were hiring.

I suppose I’m lucky that I showed up at the one place that is hiring while they were still interviewing. A day later, and who knows?

My mother thinks that I should keep up the trotting-about-with-a-smile approach. I am less certain. Tomorrow, I think I will try it along Ruston Way. After that, however, I believe I will stick to places that have announced their openings online.

My resume is unimpressive and I don’t know if my references will remember me, so a winning smile might be helpful… but I’m not certain I really have one of those. Still, it’s a waste of time to keep asking around in person and consistently be told that, no, we aren’t hiring right now. I shall attempt online to locate places that are hiring and then drop off a resume in person, though many want one submitted online.

Other than that, there’s really no news. My stepfather’s mother left. My brother is going to his Senior Prom on Saturday. I’m pretty sure that I have a hair appointment coming up; when I last got my hair cut, during Winter Break, I made an appointment to return sometime in late May, when I was sure I’d be back from college. I think I should probably call the salon, because I can’t remember when it is. Here’s hoping that I haven’t stood a hair-stylist up.

Home for summer break. It’s a big relief — just before finals, my netbook power-cord died and I had to order a new one from the computer company. Then I got sick. Really sick. The second sickest I have ever been in my life, after the time when I was sixteen and nearly died of pneumonia.

So, yeah.

I do not think that I did well on my finals.

And I am really glad to be home.

Now the hunt for a summer job begins. My goal is waitress, but I’d be happy with hostess. I will probably try wandering from restaurant to restaurant near my house tomorrow. Hopefully I can conjure a smile winning enough to distract from my lack of experience. Surely stranger things have happened.

Until then, I am stuck in a small house with my mother, stepfather, brother (18, and still attending high school for a few more weeks), stepbrother (4), two large dogs, and my stepfather’s mother, who is visiting from New York until Wednesday.

I got a new swimsuit! I’m excited! I just ordered it online from Victoria’s Secret.

This top, for $9.99. Image from Victoria's Secret.

The color of the bikini top is “milkshake pink.” I’d really wanted it, when I first saw it online, but they didn’t offer it in my size and pink. Then, early this afternoon, it appeared! I got it in a 34D. A 32D would have been better, but beggars cannot be choosers. I figured that the larger band size wouldn’t matter, since it just ties in the back. Technically, the cup size is also one smaller, but there is removable push-up padding that I can take out, if it doesn’t fit well enough.

This bottom, for $12.99. Image from Victoria's Secret.

The bikini bottom was available in medium, which I think is the size I need. Ordering clothes online, without being able to try them on in-store, always necessitates some guesswork. The pattern is called “tribal floral.”

They should be delivered by the 15th. Now I just have to wait for them to arrive, hope that the top and bottom both fit, and that they look good together.

I didn’t really do anything for April Fools’ Day. Somehow, the older I get, the more holidays of all sorts fall by the wayside. I did not attempt any pranks, nor was I fooled. I did appreciate Hulu’s trip back to 1996, however. That was fun, and hideous enough to make me thankful for the 21st century.

Easter is coming up, at the end of the month. I’m supposed to be working front-of-house at a theatre, that week (as well as the two weeks prior). Yesterday, I had an argument with my mother, over the phone, about it. She wants me to come home for Easter; I am working and simply cannot.

I wish I could, though.

An update on the tampon front: when I find whoever invented the cardboard-applicator tampon, I will beat his ass. The tampon hurt to take out, and I could only (barely, laboriously, painfully) get the tip of a second one in. I ended up throwing it away. I’m off cardboard applicators for life. Screw ’em. My mother, oddly, prefers them, so I’m given the rest of the box to her.

I had assumed, considering how bulky, awkward, and cheap-looking they are, that the cardboard-applicator tampons were made by some off brand that I would have never heard of. They were not. They were made by the same brand that makes the smooth, plastic-applicator tampons I usually use.

I have a lot of problems with The Daily Mail, but I do keep going back to their site. I enjoyed their recent piece on Prince Harry, mostly because Harry himself seems so nice and fun and normal. The Mail can be summed up in the observation that their article title announces that Harry says his mother would have been proud of Prince William; in the video footage that’s their source, Harry says he hopes his mother would have been proud. Considering that this is The Daily Mail, the discrepancy is almost negligible.

I went to a poetry reading tonight. I was supposed to go to a French-themed open-mic night at a cafe, afterwards, but I ended up going back to my dorm and getting into a pair of cozy sweatpants-style shorts and a tank-top. I was far too comfortable to contemplate getting dressed properly and going out again. It’s too bad, really, because things were shaping up to be quite staggeringly pretentious.

I also used a cardboard-applicator tampon, this afternoon, for the first time since I was eleven. I got my first period in January of 2002, just two months after I turned eleven. It was suitably horrible. I used pads until that summer, when my family went on vacation in Mexico.

Mexico was stunningly beautiful and hotter and more humid than anything I, a girl born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, had ever experienced. I was also on my period during the trip, with the worst menstrual cramps I have ever had. Until my mid-teens, I got dreadful cramps with my period every month. I still get cramps (I have them now!), but not so bad as they once were. While in Mexico, possibly exacerbated by the heat, I had the worst cramps of my life. There were hours when I could neither walk nor sit up straight.

As I mentioned, I had always used pads before (even during ballet). In preparation for the trip, I got contact lenses, so that I could swim and snorkel without my glasses. I also got a box of tampons.

At barely eleven, I had never had a sex-ed class, nor had anyone ever properly explained genitalia to me. I knew things academically, from books that I had read. Women have three holes down there: urethra, vagina, anus. The vagina is in the middle. Etc. When I was eleven, I had no idea how tiny the urethra is. I was terrified that I would stick the tampon in the wrong hole. My state-of-mind was, of course, muddled to begin with. I was ashamed of my body, depressed to have begun menarche so young, scared that someone would realize what I was going through, miserable that I was the only one of my friends to have begun menstruating already, worried that I would screw-up somehow, and well-aware that my cramps and general misery were keeping me from enjoying a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Looking back, I cannot remember how it happened. Perhaps my mother and I had not realized that I would be on my period during the trip, and had not brought tampons. Perhaps we had run out. Perhaps we were on a long day-trip and mine were all at the hotel.

The point is that my mother had to buy some tampons for me in Mexico. They proved to be fat, squat things with huge cardboard applicators. I dutifully trudged away to put one in. I had already found plastic-applicator tampons to be painful — even the strings chafed my vagina, through the hours I wore one. But I was completely unprepared for the pain of a cardboard-applicator tampon.

I could feel my body stretching to accommodate it, could feel a sharp pain when it hit… something… up there, inside me. And, once I pushed it out of the applicator, I could feel the dry cotton scrape its way slowly along.

I was miserable on the trip. I regret it still, though there was nothing to be done. After returning home, I had a personal boycott of tampons until I was about sixteen, and still used pads with far more regularity until I was seventeen or eighteen. And I have always, always used plastic-applicators.

Today, I awoke to discover that I was on my period. Always a charming discovery. I also discovered that my lovely box of Tampax Pearls was empty. I made do with an emergency tampon from my purse, then went to the campus convenience store to buy more. I got a box of ten, all they had to offer. This afternoon, when I needed one, I opened the box to discover that they were cardboard-applicators.

For the first time in almost ten years, I used a cardboard-applicator tampon. I was not expecting it to be very uncomfortable. Yes, they had hurt like the dickens, when I was younger, but surely not now. Then, I had had a child-sized vagina. Now, wouldn’t I have an adult-sized one?

Guess what? It still hurt. I could barely get the darn thing out of the applicator, which was indeed far too wide. Pushing it in, the end of the applicator painfully hit my cervix. Slowly sliding the tampon out of the applicator, it scratched dryly along the rest of its way.

This article about Andre the Giant made me smile. I’ve loved him since I was a child and saw his Fezzik in The Princess Bride. When I get my time-machine up and running, I’m picking Andre up and we’re going out on the town with Dylan Thomas.

(For reference, I am 5’4″ tall and I’ve never manged more than two beers in an hour. Not because I can’t handle that much alcohol, but because I can’t handle that much liquid. Seriously, I can’t even comprehend how someone could drink that much of anything.)

Dame Elizabeth Taylor died two days ago. I didn’t know her, of course, but this makes me sad. She was a talented actress, a tireless campaigner for AIDS research, and she always seemed like a hell of a lot of fun. And, yes, Taylor was one of the most stunningly beautiful women who ever lived.

Just look at those eyes.

Taylor’s passing aside, my week has been all right. I’m on Spring Break, back in my hometown, visiting family. Tonight I went to Peanut Sauce, a great Thai restaurant, with my father and brother. I hadn’t been there in years. Possibly the most delicious meal I’ve had in months. Definitely better than college cafeteria food.

I really have no proper segue between the two: Taylor and the dinner. It feels gauche to combine them, as I’m doing, but odd the devote an entire post to Taylor, like a professional obituary. Because, of course, I can’t write anything like the sort of obituary that Elizabeth Taylor deserves. She fucking rocked, and she made no apology for who she was.